SAN FRANCISCO — Meta plans to lay off workers this week, three people with knowledge of the situation said, adding that the job losses at the company would be the most significant since its founding in 2004.
It was unclear how many people would be cut and in which departments, the people said, who did not want to be identified because they were not authorized to speak publicly. The layoffs were expected by the end of the week. At the end of September, Meta had 87,314 employees, 28 percent more than a year ago.
Meta has been struggling with financial problems for months and increasingly insists on costs. The Silicon Valley company, which owns Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, has spent billions of dollars on the emerging technology of the metaverse, an immersive online world, just as the global economy has slowed and inflation has risen.
At the same time, digital advertising — which makes up the bulk of Meta’s revenue — has weakened as advertisers have pulled out, impacting many social media companies. Meta’s business has also been hurt by privacy changes Apple has made, which have hampered the ability of many apps to target mobile ads to users.
Last month, Meta posted a 50 percent drop in quarterly earnings and the second consecutive decline in sales. At the time, the company said it would “make significant changes across the board to work more efficiently,” including downsizing a number of teams and hiring only in the highest-priority areas.
Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, had added that most “teams will remain flat or shrink over the next year.” He said the company “would end up being either about the same size, or even a slightly smaller organization than we are today in 2023.”
The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week about Meta’s plans for layoffs.
Mr. Zuckerberg has been signaling for months that difficult times lie ahead. In July, he told employees the company was facing one of the “worst recessions we’ve seen in recent history” and that employees should prepare to do more work with fewer resources. Their performances would also be judged more intensively than before, he said.
“I think some of you may decide that this place isn’t for you, and that self-selection is okay with me,” Zuckerberg told employees in a phone call at the time. “Realistically, there are probably a lot of people at the company who shouldn’t be here.”
Meta joins other tech companies that have laid off workers as economic conditions have become more challenging. Tech companies boomed during the coronavirus pandemic, but many of the largest companies reported financial results in recent weeks that showed they were feeling the impact of the global economic jitters.
Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and the new owner of Twitter, laid off half of the company’s staff on Friday. Last week, Lyft also said it would cut 13 percent of its employees, or about 650 of its 5,000 employees. Stripe, a payment processing platform, said it would cut 14 percent of its employees, about 1,100 jobs. Snap, Robinhood and Coinbase are among the companies that have announced job cuts this year.
Other technology companies freeze their staff. Last week, Amazon said it had decided to pause incremental company hiring because the economy was “in an uncertain place.” The move added to a freeze from last month, when the e-commerce giant stopped hiring companies and technology in its retail business for the rest of the year.
